Captive dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, develop signature whistles that match acoustic features of human-made model sounds
Citable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/2490As published
https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1496079DOI
10.1121/1.1496079Keyword
Acoustic field; Acoustic signal processing; Biocommunications; Speech; Acoustic variables measurementAbstract
This paper presents a cross-sectional study testing whether dolphins that are born in aquarium pools where they hear trainers' whistles develop whistles that are less frequency modulated than those of wild dolphins. Ten pairs of captive and wild dolphins were matched for age and sex. Twenty whistles were sampled from each dolphin. Several traditional acoustic features (total duration, duration minus any silent periods, etc.) were measured for each whistle, in addition to newly defined flatness parameters: total flatness ratio (percentage of whistle scored as unmodulated), and contiguous flatness ratio (duration of longest flat segment divided by total duration). The durations of wild dolphin whistles were found to be significantly longer, and the captive dolphins had whistles that were less frequency modulated and more like the trainers' whistles. Using a standard t-test, the captive dolphin had a significantly higher total flatness ratio in 9/10 matched pairs, and in 8/10 pairs the captive dolphin had significantly higher contiguous flatness ratios. These results suggest that captive-born dolphins can incorporate features of artificial acoustic models made by humans into their signature whistles.
Description
Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2002. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 112 (2002): 728-739, doi:10.1121/1.1496079.
Collections
Suggested Citation
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 112 (2002): 728-739Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Sonar-induced pressure fields in a post-mortem common dolphin
Foote, Kenneth G.; Hastings, Mardi C.; Ketten, Darlene R.; Lin, Ying-Tsong; Reidenberg, Joy S.; Rye, Kent (Acoustical Society of America, 2012-02)Potential physical effects of sonar transmissions on marine mammals were investigated by measuring pressure fields induced in a 119-kg, 211-cm-long, young adult male common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) cadaver. The specimen ... -
Deep seafloor arrivals in long range ocean acoustic propagation
Stephen, Ralph A.; Bolmer, S. Thompson; Udovydchenkov, Ilya A.; Worcester, Peter F.; Dzieciuch, Matthew A.; Andrew, Rex K.; Mercer, James A.; Colosi, John A.; Howe, Bruce M. (Acoustical Society of America, 2013-10)Ocean bottom seismometer observations at 5000 m depth during the long-range ocean acoustic propagation experiment in the North Pacific in 2004 show robust, coherent, late arrivals that are not readily explained by ocean ... -
Observationally constrained modeling of sound in curved ocean internal waves: Examination of deep ducting and surface ducting at short range
Duda, Timothy F.; Lin, Ying-Tsong; Reeder, D. Benjamin (Acoustical Society of America, 2011-09)A study of 400 Hz sound focusing and ducting effects in a packet of curved nonlinear internal waves in shallow water is presented. Sound propagation roughly along the crests of the waves is simulated with a three-dimensional ...